In four studies, the authors show that consumers’ savings can be increased or decreased merely by changing the way consumers think about their saving goals. Consumers can (1) either specify or not specify an exact amount to save (goal specificity) and (2) focus on either how to save or why to save (construal level). The results illustrate that specific goals help consumers save more when the sa...

The amount of user interaction is a prime cost factor in interactive program veriication. This paper analyzes situations in which the reuse of previous proofs can help reducing these costs. In particular , it describes a technique that reuses subproofs in the veriication of invariants of state transition systems. This technique replays decisions of generalized previous proof attempts from the s...

In this research, an analytical method for quantification of the thermal energy performance improvement for a building integrated photovoltaic double-skin façade has provided. The system has been suggested as a retrofit measure for an existing building in Tehran. The effect of thermal performance has been analyzed through computer-assisted developed code using engineering equation solver softwa...

Solving traffic equilibrium problem, or “traffic assignment”, as the last step in Transportation Planning, distributes OD trip demands of a transportation network over the network links with regard to Traffic Equilibrium Law, and estimates the link flows. In formulations of traffic equilibrium which are based on path saving, the memory consumption is considerably affected by the number of effct...

In 1996, Duke Children's Hospital was in serious trouble. Its $11 million annual operating loss had forced administrators to make cutbacks. As a result, some caregivers felt that the quality of care had deteriorated. Parents' complaints were on the rise. Frustrated staff members were quitting. In this article, Jon Meliones, DCH's chief medical director, candidly describes how his debt-ridden ho...

This study examined how motivation for learning English, the amount of contact with English, and  length  of  residence  in  the  target language area affects Korean graduate students’ English pragmatic skills. The study attempted to account for differential pragmatic development among 50  graduate-level  Korean  students  in  relation  to  individual  factors  mentioned  above.  The  data were...

We present a simple, operatingsystem independent method to reduce the number of seek operations and consequently reduce the energy consumption of a hybrid storage device consisting of a hard disk and a flash memory. Trace-driven simulations show that migrating a tiny amount of the address space (0.0001%) from disk to flash already results in a significant storage energy reduction (12%) at virtu...

This paper describes a case study of improving the asset performance of ethylene cracking furnaces through energy saving by Yokogawa’s Asset Performance Diagnostics service, one of the services of Plant Asset Effectiveness Optimization Services, InsightSuiteAE. During regular maintenance of ethylene cracking furnaces, steam and air are supplied to tubes for decoking to burn and remove coke whic...